


More Precious than a Carriage

by Attic_Nights



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Kind of AU, M/M, On the Run, Road Trips, alternate canon perhaps, disguises ftw, in the most canon way, punk!Cas, rocker!claire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 13:22:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2389793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Attic_Nights/pseuds/Attic_Nights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the lam, Claire Novak and Castiel embark on a road trip together. They run, get lost, and find themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Precious than a Carriage

**Author's Note:**

> _"A good companion on a journey is more precious than a carriage."_
> 
>  
> 
> I wrote this a while ago but kind of forgot until there was all this talk about Claire possibly coming back to Supernatural. Which... about time. (Kind of means this is unbetaed, so you have been warned)

“What good are runes and sigils if someone recognises you?” Claire had stated rather reasonably one morning, propped up against a giant pine tree in country Idaho. They were dining on stolen apples from a farm a about mile back. The apples were crisp, their juices running down their lips like peaches.

Castiel looked at her, considering. She had a point, and it was one of the reasons he had changed his clothes. He replied as much, fingering his second-hand leather jacket.

She shook her head and stretched. “You still look like…” she trailed off, hands suspended mid-gesture, and he nodded.

This was how he found himself the next day in a remote rest stop clad only in his boxers and socks, sitting on the closed lid of a dusty toilet.

Claire helped apply the peroxide and water mix, slender fingers combing through his scalp, behind his ears and at the nape of his neck. She used one of their water bottles, which they would have to throw out after this, and a wad of one-ply toilet paper to prevent too much being poured out. Castiel watched a spider bounce around the peeling paint beside the scratched mirror, trying to keep still himself. They were in the Ladies—something that had made him baulk until Claire explained that social codes only applied if there were others around.

“You’re here,” he had argued, squinting.

“And I’m only one person. Not other _s_. Come _on_.”

Once satisfied with Castiel, she handed him the bottle and they swapped positions. Though Claire had been a natural blonde as a child, with peroxide, every blonde looked fake. Or so she said.

The fumes were quite strong now, and he wrinkled his nose, but diligently repaid the favour. Her strands of hair were long, and often tangled. It did not take long to work out that a downwards application worked best, from roots to tips, the birds’ nests gradually teased out.

The bathroom became oppressive with its darkness and grime, so they waited for the peroxide to finish bleaching outdoors. They sat down together on the grey rock gravel, limbs akimbo in the sun, both in their underwear.

That evening he looked critically in the side mirror of their shared motorcycle, the hair having been rinsed and time passed to dry. Though he’d never really noticed, his eyebrows were fair enough that his new blond locks didn’t look too strange, not strange enough to stand out, though he thought Claire’s looked better.

Suited her, even. But perhaps that was the way she wore it with an ease of confidence.

When he asked, all she said was, “You’ll fix me, too. So no worries. But for now, we’ll run.”

He looked different though, and he hoped that was enough to keep him under the angel-demon radar.

They took a detour via the Grand Canyon.

They spent overnight there, camped in a secluded patch of red, baked earth. He thought of Hael as he combed his hands through Claire’s wind-knotted hair that night, blonde dusted with dirt, and didn’t say a word.

“Don’t want to go in a straight line,” explained Claire one day, her black eye makeup morning-smudged. In that moment, on the off chance they were followed, it made sense, the teenager a paragon of the lam. Castiel picked up a small kohl pencil curiously, and nodded.

They moved up the green belt in Colorado, winding on and off the 85 route, spending a few days at Colorado Springs before turning off into Kansas. They went via Dodge City simply because Claire insisted, her eyes lighting up.

When asked, her smile fumbled and she said, “Wait for iiiit,” elongating the vowel sound in the last word for emphasis.

Then in the morning propped beside the motorcycle’s packed saddlebags she said, “Still waiting for it?”

“What?”

“Let’s get the hell out of Dodge.”

He assumed it was a reference of some kind, and he thought of Dean. Like all thoughts of Dean lately, they clawed at his chest desperately. He frowned.

They travelled long distances and stayed in few places, off the grid.

He checked the tire tread of the beaten Yamaha bike, and Claire’s got her hands on the engine.

“You and Dean?”

“It’s… complicated.” He doesn’t offend her by adopting ignorance. ‘Dean and Cas’ was a persistent shadow. While it had been there for years, a constant thread, woven on a loom of emotion into a tapestry of connection, it was complex. Hester had been right; from the moment he’d laid a hand on Dean in Hell, he’d been lost. Completely.

The thought doesn’t scare him like it used to. Just makes him sad.

“And simple too?”

“Sometimes. Rarely. But when it is, it’s…” He cast about for a description that could appropriately be used for ‘Dean and Cas’.

“Happy?”

She said it as a question, and he pondered it. Happy was a simple adjective that could denote good feelings, from the rush of flying a kite, to the promise of a wedding day. What he felt was something light, flooding and absolute in a way that made his true form seem nothing more than a twinkle of morning sun on a single dewdrop. Their soul and grace together were something more than _everything_ , but still tainted with gut-wrenching potential of _more_. Discounting the betrayals, the hurt and isolation, the laughter, the teasing and the touches, what pained were the moments of pie-sated happiness still lying unachieved. There was no promise (and he shied away from the memory of their last meeting), and now, separate as they were, there was not even a rush.

Save in memory.

And potential.

He stepped back in his mind’s eye and observed the turmoil as a shadow in the light of what was simply a powerful connection. He supposed there was happiness there.

“We share a profound bond.”

She was watching him intently. “Love can be like that.”

“What do you know of that?” He looked pointedly at her, some paternal emotions spluttering out like the slow undoing of a soda bottle cap.

“I know family. But that’s different.”

He frowned. In a way, he supposed she’s right. “Dean and I are family. Were. Uh…” he allowed himself to trail off, using his blunt nail to jimmy out a pebble from black rubber.

She nodded, for which he feels grateful. Love was not exclusive, he had found. Heaviness lifted from his gut, and he twitched a smile, eyes flickering around at the wooded scenery.

 

They work at a farm up north for a few days in exchange for food and board. A storm had caught them out the night before, so they were left feeling somewhat betrayed by nature. The feelings of betrayal lingered though as the days they worked at the stables were met with nothing but sunshine.

“Sod’s law,” she griped, hosing down a dappled grey mare. The animal shivered at the cold water and shuffled its clod hooves on the concrete below.

“What was your mother like?” he asked, watching the colourful weanlings in the other field. They bucked and nipped each other playfully.

“Don’t you have his memories?”

He explained. “They are ephemeral, and without him here, tied to my grace as he once was… they fade.”

“I miss her.” Claire does not stop in her hosing down of the horse.

The squeegee in Castiel’s hand stilled. “She deserves to be missed.”

The next day Castiel sat still as Claire lined his eyes with kohl.

“Stop blinking.”

“It feels odd.” At this her hand drew back, so he cocked his head. “Why did you stop?”

“Thought you wanted me to.”

“Oh,” said he, “No.”

“Cool. Think you can take me to get some more piercings?”

A week or so passes under a blur of blue and asphalt and grumbling engines.

“What happened?” she asked.

They’re eating ramen from a billy can beside a low fire. Ursa Major was above them, cold and gentle, Yosemite National Park around them, looming and warm.

“I loved him,” he stated frankly.

“I know,” she rolled her eyes. “I was you, once. I remember it. It’s changed though, right?”

He doesn’t know where to start, so he starts from a random memory of leather and lightning. By the time he’s done, having begun, the moon is hanging high in the sky, a silver sliver of light.

“So the trials… were all to do with angels, humans and love. That sort of stuff.”

“Yes,” he said after a moment, finding no fault in her conclusion. “I suppose they were.”

And for the first time in a long time, he thinks about green eyes and the journey home.               

 


End file.
